Like many home buyers, Wall Street Journal reporter Jonathan D. Rockoff and his wife bought a home and promptly launched a major renovation project. Mr. Rockoff will chronicle the gut renovation of their co-op in a new column for Developments.

I’m not handy. One time, I tried to put in a paper towel holder—it wound up listing on an unsightly angle. A small shelf that I had installed in our apartment bathroom, after hanging perilously for months, just fell off. Recently, I somehow broke a night light…taking it out of the socket.

This is all to say that I’m not one of these do-it-yourselfers who could show Bob Vila a trick or two. When my wife and I recently bought a co-op apartment in Forest Hills, Queens, I knew I’d need an architect. I will similarly rely on a contractor, preferably one whose fee wouldn’t require raising the national debt limit. This place, it needs A LOT of work.

Knowing my un-handy chromosome, our first go-round at purchasing a home didn’t involve any renovations. Our row house in Baltimore had been gut renovated before we bought it. And yet, our first night there was still harried, because I, um, couldn’t turn on the boiler’s pilot light. That purchase was about at the peak of the real estate bubble, in 2006. Leaving for New York City two years later, we sold the place, for a loss.

All of this should have served as an object lesson when we began looking to buy an apartment in Queens 1½ years ago. And we did concentrate on apartments that didn’t require much work. But none worked out: We felt they were over-priced, or the monthly maintenance was too high or the space lacked a key requirement, like a second bedroom decently sized for our son.

But why did I — and it was my fault — ignore all common sense and personal experience and buy a place needing a total overhaul? Right now, it’s 1,300 square feet of soiled floors, peeling paint and ancient plumbing and electric. The kitchen must be entirely replaced. When the co-op board interviewed us, the first thing they asked was whether we were going to renovate.

Throughout the apartment are bizarre sayings — “Freedom of Love” is one; some sort of ode to beer is another — that were scrawled across the windows and walls when we arrived. Yeah, not our decorating style.

My wife won’t step into the place until it’s renovated.

But the apartment is in a leafy neighborhood with good schools (we know Forest Hills well, having been renting there for three years). For the city, it’s got a large living room and two nice-sized bedrooms. The many windows let in lots of light. And the old, brick building is handsome, with an Art Deco style, wood-lined lobby and lots of period details. Also crucial: a price, reflecting the need for a gut renovation, that we could afford.

As we ready for the work, I find my emotions alternating between anticipation and dread. There’s a stain in the second bedroom’s closet; but the super says it was from a leak fixed long, long ago. Our architects have some great ideas for modernizing the space; but will we able to afford these grand plans? Potential contractors have done impressive jobs elsewhere; but how do we guard against seeming inevitabilities like cost over-runs and delays?

Urgency is starting to set in. It’s not, er, ideal to pay both a mortgage and rent. I’m looking forward to taking the first step: demolition. And soon.

Part of me thinks it would have been better to just keep renting; another part looks forward to the day the renovations are over, the move-in is finally under way and I look around from shiny new appliances to freshly painted walls, and for the first time, call the place home.